Page 34 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
‘I paid the debt the next morning and put Orion up at a hotel until he was fit for Mother to see him.’ Jasper pushed a hand through his hair. ‘I cut off all credit for him at the gaming hells. When his own funds ran out, he was not to be allowed to play.’ Jasper sighed. ‘He was not happy with me. We had many fights that spring.’
‘Well, it appears to have worked,’ Fleur said as they reached the end of the spring quarter account book. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any more payments to Brown and Whitaker or other such folks.’
Jasper reached for the summer and then the autumn books. ‘You take autumn, I’ll do summer. Then we can trade to double check each other.’ He hated this. Going through someone’s finances was like going through their underwear drawer. Yet it was the only way if Orion was to be vindicated. He’d just finished with summer, having spied nothing, when Fleur looked up. Her expression grim.
‘There’s a deposit in October of 1846 for seven thousand, eight hundred pounds,’ she said in a near whisper. Jasper froze. That was the exact sum request for dam repairs in the August work order.
‘Who is it from?’ Jasper asked, although it didn’t matter. What else could it be? It wasn’t Orion’s quarterly allowance. The timing was wrong and so was the amount. It was too much.
Fleur shook her head. ‘It doesn’t say.’
‘I’ll get Mr Sikes and have him check the bank records.’ It was the next logical step. Leaving the room also gave him a chance to get his emotions under control. Good God, Orion had really done it. He’d filed a work order and pocketed the money. And a few years later eighty-one people had died.
Jasper calmly made the request for Sikes to find the deposit record, but all the while his mind raced. What was he going to do? This would devastate his mother. What had Orion been thinking? Why had he done this? Had he got in trouble again and tried to find his own way out?
He waited until Sikes returned with the bank’s record of transactions. ‘Here’s the cheque.’ Sikes showed him the grey and mauve note used by the Huddersfield Banking Company. Jasper studied it, his eyes landing on the signature at the bottom, his gut tightening. It had been issued from Parliament for the express purpose of reservoir repairs. The only saving grace was that it had not been issued directly to Orion. It had been issued to the Holmes River Reservoir Commission.
Jasper furrowed his brow. ‘If this cheque was not issued to Orion, how was it possible he was able to deposit it into his account?’
Sikes set down the big book that kept track of deposits. He turned to the date the cheque had been deposited. ‘It didn’t go to his account. It went to the Commission’s account. You can see the amount right here. Then, a day later, one of the commission members transferred the funds to Orion’s personal account. I imagine whoever was the drawer at the time did the transfer.’ At which point, Jasper surmised, the funds fell out of the public eye. They were mixed with Orion’s personal monies and no longer traceable. Or maybe they were. ‘Sikes, I’d like the family ledgers for forty-seven.’
Fleur looked up when he returned, new ledgers in hand. ‘The cheque was a match, sort of.’ He explained how it had been deposited to the commission’s account first and the whole sum was later transferred to Orion. ‘I want to see if we can find where the money went. Was it frittered away on new purchases?’ Jasper tried to remember back that far. Had Orion gone through a spending phase that was over and above his usual? ‘Or...’ he offered another suggestion fearfully ‘...did it go to pay more debt?’ He handed Fleur a ledger. ‘If it went to pay debt, there would be a large outlay all at once.’
After an hour of combing ledgers, they’d come up with little. ‘There is nothing except for these four payments, made quarterly,’ Fleur remarked. ‘They caught my eye because they were regular occurrences, and because when you total up the amount, it comes out to seven thousand, eight hundred.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want it to.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ Jasper slouched in his chair. Perhaps it was his fault. Why had Orion done this and thought he could get away with it? That no one would find out? It didn’t make sense. ‘Who did the payments go to?’ He did not think for a moment the payments had gone for reservoir repairs. At some level, it didn’t matter where the money went. The bottom line was that Orion had taken it.
‘It doesn’t say. Your brother doesn’t seem to be a prolific record keeper. He just writes down the basics.’
Perhaps because he didn’t want anyone to know. If only he knew where Orion was now. He could get some answers, talk some sense into him. Jasper forced his mind to work. He had to think of next steps. ‘You were right. My brother embezzled money from the reservoir commission.’ When he looked at Fleur, she was pale, her expression tight.
‘I would prefer not to be right about this,’ Fleur said apologetically.
‘That’s not how you felt when this all began,’ he corrected. ‘You don’t need to feel that way now simply because things changed between us.’ No, this couldn’t be about them. This had to be about Orion. ‘What will you do with the information?’ It was the last piece she’d been looking for, the piece that proved a single man had been responsible for the collapse of the dam. If the money had gone to repair the waste pit, none of this would have happened.
‘TheTribunewill break the story.’ They were speaking in whispers now. If they didn’t speak these horrible things too loudly, perhaps they wouldn’t become real.
‘The board of directors will be pleased. You will sell a lot of newspapers. It isn’t every day a peer’s brother is caught stealing money from the government.’ Just saying the words made him sick to his stomach. How could he tell her not to print the story when she had her evidence? That had been the only condition he’d asked her for, that if she did want to connect the deaths to Lord Orion that she have proof for it. Would it be enough? All that was left was the press of causal arguments. Could it be proven that this money had been given to the commission for the express and singular purpose of the repairing the waste pit? Or had it been meant for other repairs? If so, it was still embezzlement, but at least it wasn’t manslaughter.
‘How long until the story breaks?’
‘A week at most. With something this big, I do need the board of directors to approve it and they will need time.’ To her credit, Fleur did not break. He admired that. Perhaps another woman would have given in to the relationship between them and decided not to publish. But Fleur was made of sterner stuff, and he loved her all the more for it—for her conviction, for her strength, for her dedication in doing what was right even when it hurt. This was not easy for her. Nor for him.
He’d chosen the right words in his head a moment ago. Helovedher, that very thing that brought pain with the joy, that very thing he’d sworn to avoid because he knew that pain first-hand from losing his father and watching his mother fall apart. Fleur had turned his well-protected logical world upside down and helovedher for it despite the cost. He would do it all again to have had this time with her, to haveherin his world no matter how briefly. How ironic he should realise that now, here at the end.
‘I do not want to cause you pain, Jasper. I am sorry it didn’t turn out another way.’ What other way was there? With her losing her papers? Her position? That would not have helped them any more than this did. Perhaps she’d been right last night. A future for them was impossible.
She rose from the table. ‘I want to commend you for your integrity. I understand I’d never have been able to access these records without your co-operation. You could have obstructed all this. You could have lied to get what you wanted and you didn’t. And I am repaying you poorly.’
‘Say nothing more, Fleur. We are past words now. I’ll take you back to Rosefields.’
She shook her head. ‘No. There’s an afternoon train to London. I think it’s best that I take it. Good bye, Jasper.’
She made a clean break of it, then, walking out of the room and towards the front doors, the sound of the click of her heels diminishing on the tiles until the door shut behind her and she was gone.
She would go to London and he would go to Rosefields to plot his next move. He had a week to find Orion, to find a barrister with an impeccable reputation or to send Orion out of the country, which seemed fairly appealing at the moment. The legal system couldn’t prosecute a man they couldn’t find. Orion would never be able to come home, but perhaps that was better than the alternative. Then, when that was settled, he would try to put his heart back together, perhaps settle for one of the girls on his mother’s list, assuming anyone would have him with the taint of scandal on the family name.
Jasper pounded a fist on the table. Damn it. He’d been right all along. Love hurt. Why the hell had he decided to test that hypothesis once more? The results had been the same.
